At the Second Gethsemani Encounter two Benedictines, Sister Margaret Michaud and Father Donald Grabner spoke about responding to the suffering caused by sickness and aging. Sister Margaret has taught a wide variety of subjects, including mathematics, physics, theology, and philosophy, on all levels from grammar school to high school to college. She currently teaches scripture at the La Crosse Diocesan School of Biblical Studies. At the time of the Second Gethsemani Encounter, she lived in a community of 40 sisters, whose median age is seventy-one, and so she dealt with sickness and aging every day. She noted that researchers have done studies of elderly women religious to learn about aging and Alzheimer ’s disease. They found that North American religious women are among the longest lived beings on this planet.

Margaret noted the various forms of suffering that come with age. It is not only the physical aches and pains but “the fear, the loss of control, the sense of helplessness, oftentimes mental anguish, and the dread of death.” (The full transcript of Sister Margaret’s presentation at Gethsemani II can be found here. She has often been been present at the deaths of sisters in her community, as well as at the deaths of her parents and of a young nephew who died of an AIDS-related illness. She commented, “Being there is indescribable. It is somehow transcendent. It’s the intersection of two worlds and very hard to put into words.”

Margaret noted that our culture often seeks to deny the reality of sickness and death. We seek remedies so that we will not be in pain, we try to block out consciousness of sickness and aging. We glorify youth and health. We shove the old to the sidelines. Margaret remarked that the American healthcare industry that can be very inhumane at times, reducing people to physical problems. When one older sister had back trouble, Margaret sought a physician, but the receptionist remarked, “Doctor is not taking any more backs.” For him, the entire identity of the sister was reduced to a particular physical ailment. She was not a person; she was a back.

Margaret described, in contrast, the attitude of Jesus in the gospels, where he reaches out again and again to the sick, the blind, the lame, and the troubled. In response to people who ask themselves why they are suffering from a particular illness, wondering what they could have done to deserve it, she cited Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John about the man born blind. “Neither this man nor his parents have sinned.” He then proceeds to cure the man.

In the parable of the Last Judgment in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “I was sick and you visited me.” St. Benedict took Jesus at his word, and wrote in Chapter 36 of the Rule: “Care of the sick must rank above and before all else, so that they may be truly served as Christ.” The Benedictine tradition has long ministered to the sick, not only within the monastic community but among their neighbors as well. Margaret noted the difficulty of aging, with increasing forgetfulness, the loss of eyesight and hearing, and she acknowledged that some people do not age gracefully. Whatever their demeanor, the sick and the elderly are to be revered as the presence of Christ, even when they are difficult to deal with.

Margaret noted that the Trappist monks in Tibherine, Algeria, continued this ministry among their Muslim friends and neighbors. One of the monks, Brother Luke, was a physician, who cared freely for anyone who came to the door. When members of the Armed Islamic Group came on Christmas Eve, 1993, and demanded that he come with them into the mountains to care for their wounded, the prior, Christian, told them that the physician was quite elderly and could not travel, but he would continue to care for all those who came to him seeking treatment. Christian explained: “As for sending Brother Luke into the mountains, it is not possible because of his old age and, above all, because of his asthma. He will be able to care for the wounded and sick who come to the dispensary. There is no problem with that. He cares without discrimination for all those in need and does not worry about who they are” (1). Even after the monks clearly knew that their lives were at risk from the militants, they remained as witness of God’s love to their Muslim friends and neighbors, and Brother Luke, faithful to the Benedictine tradition, continued his ministry of medicine to all in need.

Acknowledging that many are plagued by the fear of death, Margaret told the story of one of their sisters, Sister Marilyn, who was diagnosed as having lung cancer at such an advanced stage that there was no treatment possible. After the doctor left the room, Margaret was not sure she fully understood, and she told the sister, “Now you know this is very serious, and this is the news that you received.” The sister sat straight up in the bed, looked Margaret in the eye, and said, “I am so glad that I had some time here on planet earth.” The sister was an artist with a true contemplative spirit. She deeply appreciated nature and spent much time listening to birds, watching deer, enjoying the natural world. Margaret commented, “She looked forward to her death with the greatest joy. Of all the deaths that I’ve been a part of, this was the happiest, the most joyful. She went to our nursing facility, and we took care of her. She was in the presence of her sisters who were there with her. Each day it seemed like she became more radiant. She would ask me, ‘Am I doing this right? What am I supposed to be doing? Am I doing this right?’” Margaret replied, “Well, Marilyn, I don’t know. I’ve never been through this. I’ve seen a lot of people go through it, but I really can’t tell you how to do it.” Margaret looked back on her final night: “The final evening when she died, she received the Eucharist and the sisters were all with her. We sang and prayed and sat with her through the night. About midnight, she became unresponsive, and just as the sun was coming up, she left us. What made her death such a wonderful experience was her own attitude, her joyfulness. But it was also the presence of the community, those of us who were there with her, supporting her.”

Father Donald Grabner is a monk of Conception Abbey in Missouri and a professor of theology at the seminary there. When one person learned that he was giving a talk on “Suffering Caused by Sickness and Aging,” the person suggested that Donald could best witness to the issue by just dropping dead. He didn’t care to do that just then, and so he spoke of his experience of monastic life and of Christianity. For him, Rudolf Otto’s description of the holy as a numinous mystery was very powerful. Otto described the mysterium tremendum as infinitely attractive and also as awesome, overpowering, frightening. The holy in this context is not simply moral obligation; it is the presence of ultimate mystery, infinite power. Donald experienced this in the paschal mystery, in Jesus Christ’s passing over through his passion, his suffering, and his death to resurrection. For Donald, the experience of the liturgy, especially Holy Week but also each Eucharist and the practice of lectio divina, the slow, meditative reading of the scriptures, allows him to enter into the paschal mystery. This opens up hope even in the midst of suffering “because we are following Christ in the way of his passion and looking forward to our participating in the death of Christ in our own death.” (The full transcript of Father Donald’s presentation can be found here).

Father Julian von Duerbeck, Benedictine monk from west suburban Chicago, spoke about his community’s practices. When someone is close to death, the person’s life story is read in the refectory—all the humorous and sorrowful things, their successes and aspects of the person’s life. The community remembers the person’s joys and sufferings as part of the unity that gives encouragement to others. On the feast of All Souls, the community goes to the cemetery and chants the name of everyone who is buried there. St. Aelred of Rievaulx, a great 12th-century Cistercian monk, commented on persons from his community who had died: “The memory of that person, their merry voice, their joyful continence, their words of inspiration are always with me.”

Sister Mary Margaret (Meg) Funk spoke about a near-death experience in Bolivia that transformed her spiritual practice. It is not exactly sickness or aging, but it is a near encounter with death. Meg was riding in a jeep with a priest, some other sisters, and a little boy named Juanito, who was deaf and dumb and retarded and who had been adopted by the sisters. As they were driving, it began to rain, and they got stuck in the mud. The water began rising more and more. The priest got out and left. Meg was able to get out and climbed on top of the jeep. The sisters inside began shouting over who would take Juanito. The Jeep began sailing downstream and rocking pretty bad. Meg jumped and found herself in a terrible, rushing stream of water. She grabbed a branch, which almost yanked her arm off. Then she crashed into a tree and lost consciousness.

When she came to again, she was floating down the river on her back during the night, with rain still coming down. She went underwater in order to think. She went over a waterfall into the Rio Roche, and she saw huge mountains all around. The river got stronger and deeper. She went down beneath the river again because she needed to think and be present. She recalled: “Once submerged again, I arrived at perfect, absolute stillness, and literally died. I can’t quite reconstruct it all, but I was down there a very long time. It was very still and very quiet. I got to this place where there was a big, soft, white light, like a tunnel but with nothing dark on the edges. It was an inviting shaft of light—so soft, so still, so beautiful, and so present. And the question when it came was free and an invitation: ‘Now? Now? Now?’ I knew then that it was a free question and it would have been okay to have answered either way. There was no fear and no discernment, either. But . . . in those moments you think about the people you care about, and I thought, ‘Oh, they are not going to like this.’ So I kicked up and up through what turned out to be a hundred feet of water, and there I was, on a vast expanse of river, with islands dotted in the middle. I angled myself over to the islands, and climbed off and on a few. I was out there five hours.” (The full transcript of Sister Meg’s remarks can be found here).

Then some insects came and began eating her. She hit them and put some mud on. Vultures began circling overhead, and she thought they were like the insects. “They want me.” She covered herself with mud, which protected her from hypothermia. Finally three Bolivian men brought her to safety, and Bolivian women gave her fresh clothing. When they went back to the jeep, her companions were dead.

Afterwards, she was very sick. She heard a priest ask the doctor if she was going to live, and the doctor said, “No, she isn’t going to make it.” Meg recalled, “That was insulting and debilitating and annoyed me. However, when I experienced that I wasn’t going to live, I got out of my sleeping bag and got up.” She had brought some Bourbon and Manhattan mix for a friend, and so that night she and her friend Sister Gilchrist drank Manhattans and said the psalms. Finally, the sun rose.

The experience taught Meg that she needed a deeper spiritual practice. It was “a radical immersion, a crossing over.” She realized that she needed a practice to handle her thoughts because she felt too vulnerable. This led her many years later to write the book, Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life (2). In it she explores the wisdom of John Cassian and presents their teachings in a practical way for Christians today. John taught that persons seeking a spiritual journey need to go through three renunciations: we must renounce our former way of life and move closer to our heart’s desire, the interior life; we must do the inner work of asceticism by renouncing our mindless thoughts. This is very difficult because we have little control over our thoughts. Finally, we must renounce our own images of God so that we can enter into contemplation of God as God. John Cassian invited his readers to “seek God by knowing and stabilizing their thoughts” (Thoughts Matter, 9).

I would like to close with a memory of a person who was not at either Gethsemani Encounter, but whose acceptance of illness and death greatly influenced me and many other people. Joseph Cardinal Bernardin was usually a very cautious diplomat. He was very conscious that he could be quoted nationally and internationally, and he usually spoke from a prepared text. He was often subtle in the distinctions he would make, and he was often successful in evoking a consensus from people with different perspectives. Three weeks before he died in the fall of 1996, he came to Mundelein Seminary, northwest of Chicago, where I was teaching at the time, and he spoke to the seminary community. His demeanor was unlike any previous encounter. He spoke directly, from the heart, without notes, for about 45 minutes. He told us that for many years he had been plagued by three fears: fear that he would be unjustly accused of misconduct in a way that would jeopardize his reputation; fear that, like his father, he would suffer from cancer; fear that, like his father, he would die prematurely. He told us that in the past three years he had been forced to face all three fears, and now he had nothing left to fear. In November 1993, he had been falsely accused of sexual misconduct with a seminarian, who later recanted the accusations. He had been diagnosed with cancer. After a period of remission and hope, it had returned in his pancreas and was too far advanced for realistic hope. He was plagued with severe fatigue and could not continue his usual schedule.

Joseph Bernardin spoke movingly about the gift of peace, which would become the title of his last book, which was published posthumously (3). It is, to my mind, a classic statement of how to face the challenge of a serious illness and approaching death. I think the crucial turning point in his spiritual life had come a number of years earlier, in an experience he used to speak of openly. When he was Archbishop of Cincinnati, he met with a group of young priests, who were members of a prayer group. As he talked with them about their lives of prayer, he came to believe that they had a deeper spiritual life than he did. He realized that he had become so caught up in the administration of the Church that he was not making adequate time for prayer. He resolved to do something about it. He decided that the time of day when he had most control over his schedule was the early morning. He began rising an hour earlier than usual to spend time in prayer before God. He would pray the Liturgy of the Hours, read the Bible slowly and meditatively. He would read spiritual writers. Sometimes, he told us, he would fall asleep, but he dedicated the time to God.

Joseph Bernardin would tell the priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago, “There is no one in this room who has more responsibilities than I, and I make time for prayer every day.” The time spent in prayer gave him a source of peace and stability beyond anything the outer world could provide. After he was falsely accused of sexual misconduct, he reflected on the situation and came to see that the young man making the charges was not his enemy. The young man had indeed been abused by a Catholic priest and was mistaken in implicating Cardinal Bernardin. After the young man publicly recanted the accusations, Cardinal Bernardin met with him, and the two were reconciled. When it was announced that the cancer had returned and Cardinal Bernardin had little time to live, the young man expressed his deepest support. One of the deepest joys of Joseph Bernardin’s life as he approached death was the knowledge that he and his accuser were at peace.

His final book is entitled The Gift of Peace. He was very clear that this was not an achievement, not a success story. The peace he felt amidst cancer and imminent death was a gift of God. Nothing he did could deserve it, but nothing in the world could take it away. The peace he experienced was a sure sign to him and to many others of the presence of God. When he died, all of the Chicago metropolitan area, as well as many beyond the area, mourned. People lined the streets for his funeral procession. Cardinal Bernardin had been a pioneer in Jewish-Catholic dialogue, had traveled to Israel with a number of Jewish and Catholic leaders from the Chicago area, and had developed deep friendships with the Jewish community. During the final period of his illness, he used to speak to his dear friend, Rabbi Herman Schaalman. For what is probably the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, rabbis and Jewish laymen said the Jewish prayers for the dead in Holy Name Cathedral for Joseph Bernardin.

I would like to conclude with words from a letter that Joseph Bernardin wrote to all of us on November 1, 1996:

“To paraphrase Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, ‘it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times.’ The worst because of the humiliation, physical pain, anxiety and fear. The best because of the reconciliation, love, pastoral sensitivity and peace that have resulted from God’s grace and the support and prayers of so many people. While not denying the former, this reflection focuses on the latter, showing how, if we let him, God can write straight with crooked lines. To put it another way, this reflection is intended to help others understand how the good and the bad are always present in our human condition and, that if we ‘let go,’ if we place ourselves totally in the hands of the Lord, the good will prevail.

“On a very personal note, I invite those who read this book to walk with me the final miles of my life’s journey. When we reach the gate, I will have to go in first—that seems to be the rule: one at a time by designation. But know that I will carry each of you in my heart! Ultimately, we will all be together, intimately united with the Lord Jesus whom we love so much. Peace and love, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin” (4).